[JURIST] Rights groups are warning that the sweeping intelligence reform package now awaiting signature by the President after Senate passage yesterday is better than earlier versions but still contains multiple provisions that threaten privacy and personal freedom. An ACLU spokesperson said in a statement late Wednesday that "While some extreme anti-immigrant measures were rejected, the bill does include several unnecessary surveillance and other Patriot Act-like provisions not found in the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but included at the insistence of several House members." She went on to argue that:

the compromise bill severely watered down a strong, independent review board designed to protect civil liberties. On one hand, lawmakers want to vastly increase the government’s power; on the other, they want to diminish oversight. The civil liberties board, as it currently stands, it little more than window dressing and a token nod to the freedoms that are an essential part of our society.

[JURIST] The former president of Morris Brown College, an historically black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, has been charged with taking out some $5 million in unauthorized federal student loans in the names of students who did not want them and using the funds to pay college expenses. Delores Cross, 68, was President of Morris Brown between 1998 and 2002; she and her former financial aid officer have been charged with some 30 counts of fraud in connection with more than 1800 false loans. When the fraud was discovered Cross and her accomplice were fired, the college lost its accreditation, and with the institution ineligible for federal student aid enrollment plummetted from 2700 to 72. As soon as the college is free from operating debt, it plans to file for reaccreditation, perhaps as early as 2007. AP has more. MBC provides background in this graduation press release from May 2004.

[JURIST] Seif el-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has said that the Libyan government will not execute the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor who were found guilty by a Libyan court in May of knowingly infecting more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. They were subsequently sentenced to death by firing squad. He stated that Libya will soon pass new laws that will limit the number of crimes punishable by death. The International Herald Tribune has more. Officials in Bulgaria Thursday praised Libya's decision. "I feel satisfaction that after so many years we heard from Libya that it doesn’t intend to carry out those sentences," stated Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy.

[JURIST] French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin Thursday announced plans to reform the country's current 35-hour workweek. While letting that formal limit stand, Raffarin said companies will be allowed to negotiate their own deals with employees regarding overtime. The 35-hour workweek was introduced under a Socialist administration in 1998, and was aimed at boosting employment by forcing companies to hire more workers. The plan has since been regarded as a failure. Reforms would give companies greater flexibility in hiring. The French government hopes reforming the policy will help lower its 10 percent unemployment rate. AP has more. From Paris, Le Figaro has local coverage in French. The French Prime Minister's website offers additional information on the workweek initiative here (in French).

[JURIST] A jury has awarded the parents of 17-year old David Boim $52 million in damages in one of the first jury awards against US-based charities accused of supporting terrorism. Boim was killed by gunmen in Israel's West Bank in 1996. Before trial, US Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys found the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Islamic Association for Palestine and alleged Hamas fund-raiser Mohammed Salah liable for Boim's death. Judge Keys tripled the jury's damage award, in accordance with US anti-terrorism law. AP has more.

[JURIST] The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of 23 mainstream Shiite groups under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, announced Thursday a list of 228 candidates running for office in the Iraq elections scheduled for January 30. Iraq's Sunni factions, who have indicated that they may boycott the election, were not included in the list, and have not announced their own candidates. In the upcoming election, Iraqis will choose a 275-member national assembly (Majlis Watani) that will write a permanent constitution to replace the current Transitional Administrative Law. Voting will be done by party list, meaning that people will not vote for individual candidates but for coalitions like the one presented on Thursday. AP has more. BBC News has background on the Iraqi leaders likely to be influential in the upcoming election.

[JURIST] The Zimbabwe parliament Thursday passed a controversial bill banning foreign-funded human rights groups from operating in the country and requiring all other rights groups to register with the governmet. Pro-government legislators have accused outside rights groups of being tools of western governments opposed to the regime of President Robert Mugabe; critics of the legislation see it as yet another manifestation of Mugabe's increasingly dictatorial hold on Zimbabwe. Reuters has more. Human Rights Watch provides a backgrounder on the legislation here. In a related development, a new report by an international lawyers group made up of leaders of the British, Irish, Australian and South African bars has concluded that the Zimbabwean legal system has been "profoundly compromised" during Mugabe's rule. Chairman Stephen Irwin, head of the Bar Council of England and Wales, wrote in the report that "Many of the judiciary have been driven from office or corrupted, and much of the legal system of Zimbabwe has been subverted by the Zanu-PF government, in an effort to frustrate the proper working of democracy and to hold on to power." The UK Press Association has more.

[JURIST] Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma signed a decree Thursday effectively firing the country's Prosecutor-General, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. Gennady Vasilyev had submitted his resignation Wednesday, which Kuchma had accepted as part of a parliamentary deal to pass a package of electoral law and constitutional reforms opening the way for a new presidential vote on December 26. Vasilyew had been sharply criticized by opposition politicians for not investigating allegations of fraud in the country's disputed presidential run-off in November, and for not initiating an investigation after pro-government regional leaders in the eastern parts of Ukraine threatened to secede. In a statement, however, Vasilyev claimed that he "took much effort to prevent the prosecutor bodies from being involved in political bias". The UK Press Association has more.

[JURIST] Military planners are seeking $25 million to build a state-of-the-art 200-cell permanent detention facilty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be guarded by a special 324-member professional guard force, according to a story running Thursday in the Miami Herald. The permanent building, based on the layout of a medium-security prison in Indiana, would replace cells made from shipping containers at the current Camp Delta; the guard force, designated the Military Police Internment and Resettlement Battalion, will replace Guantanamo's temporary staff of mostly reservist security personnel and would be operational in 2005. The Miami Herald has more; an October 2004 story in the Legal Times provides background on the construction of the permanent facilty.

[JURIST] The UK House of Lords ruled Thursday that immigration controls set up by the British government had systematically discriminated against Roma Gypsies trying to enter Britain, largely from the Czech Republic where many faced prosecution. Roma, known for their nomadic lifetsyle, have traditionally been a suspect social group across Europe, and have frequently been victims of discrimination and oppression. Statistics presented to the Law Lords showed that Roma applicants for asylum in Britain were 400 times more likely to be turned down than other claimants. The controls at issue in the case have since been removed following the admission of the Czech Republic to the European Union. The UK human rights group Liberty, which brought the case, has issued this press release, saying that the ruling exposed "the racism at the heart of the Government’s asylum policy." The Houes of Lords judgment is here. The UK Guardian has more.

[JURIST] Acting at the instance of President Lucio Gutierrez, the Ecuadorian Congress has narrowly voted to dismiss all 31 members of the country's Supreme Court on grounds that the institution had become too politicized. The mass dismissal, approved by 52 of the Congress's 100 members, is being sharply criticized by opposition politicians as unconstitutional and likely directed at permitting the return to Ecuador of former President Abdala Bucaram, who fled to Panana in 1997 to avoid corruption charges. A new slate of judges is scheduled to be appointed later today. BBC News has more. From Quito, El Comercio has local coverage in Spanish.

[JURIST] California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has announced that his state will sue the federal government to block enforcement of the so-called Weldon amendment, a provision in a massive federal appropriations bill awaiting signature by President Bush that could deny California federal funds if it is found to discriminate against any health care provider because they refuse to "provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions." Lockyer said in a statement Wednesday that the amendment, named after its sponsor, Republican Congressman David Weldon of Florida, was "an unacceptable attack on women's rights and state sovereignty, and a back-door attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade... [T]he Weldon amendment's sweeping scope goes far beyond restrictions previously considered by the courts. And we believe even the most deferential court will find the provision exceeds federal spending power and violates the 10th Amendment." Read Lockyer's press release on the court challenge here. Reuters has more

[JURIST] CTV News is reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has approved a proposed federal law that would make same-sex marriage legal across Canada. Lower courts in six Canadian provinces and one territory have already ruled that the traditional legal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman is unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In its ruling delivered just a few minutes ago, the high court concluded that the federal government has the right to legalize same-sex marriage but declined to rule on the question of whether the traditional definition of marriage was constitutional or not under the Charter. The Canadian Department of Justice has more on the same-sex marriage reference. CTV News has more.

9:56 AM ET - The Canadian Supreme Court's judgment is now online here. In making its decision, the high court also noted that "the guarantee of religious freedom in s. 2(a) of the Charter is broad enough to protect religious officials from being compelled by the state to perform civil or religious same-sex marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs."

[JURIST] Judge Charles Pickering, named by President Bush to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals through a "recess appointment" in January of this year after his regular nomination stalled in the Senate, has said he is retiring and will make a formal announcement to that effect Thursday. Pickering's nomination was bitterly opposed by Democrats and liberal activist groups that regarded him as being anti-abortion and have a questionable civil rights record. His recess appointment, which lasts only to the start of the next Congressional session, is scheduled to expire in January 2005. Pickering is 67. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Pentagon spokeman has said that four members of an elite US military special operations team have received administrative punishment for using Tasers - electronic stun guns - on Iraqi prisoners. Taser devices subdue human targets by delivering a shock of up to 50,000 volts that disrupts muscle activity. The Pentagon spokeman said said the four had been reprimanded for excessive use of force, had been reassigned to other duties, and could still be subject to criminal charges. The statements in a Wednesday press briefing came a day after an ACLU Freedom of Information application brought to light a memo [PDF] written by the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency reporting that DIA personnel who had witnessed special operations abuse of Iraqi prisoners had been threatened and told not to talk to anyone about what they had seen. The memo was written in June 2004, two months after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The full transcript of Wednesday's press briefing is avialable from DOD here. Reuters has more.